| Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld | |||||
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| Princess of Leiningen Duchess of Kent and Strathearn | |||||
 Portrait byGeorge Dawe,c. 1818 | |||||
| Born | Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (1786-08-17)17 August 1786 Coburg,Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Holy Roman Empire | ||||
| Died | 16 March 1861(1861-03-16) (aged 74) Frogmore House, Windsor, Berkshire, England | ||||
| Burial | 25 March 1861
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| House | Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld | ||||
| Father | Francis, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld | ||||
| Mother | Countess Augusta Reuss of Ebersdorf | ||||
| Signature |  | ||||
Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (Marie Louise Victoire; 17 August 1786 – 16 March 1861), laterPrincess of Leiningen and subsequentlyDuchess of Kent and Strathearn, was a German princess and the mother ofQueen Victoria of the United Kingdom. As the widow ofEmich Karl, Prince of Leiningen, from 1814, she served asregent of theprincipality during the minority of her son from her first marriage,Karl, until her second wedding in 1818 toPrince Edward, fourth son ofGeorge III.[1]
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Victoria was born inCoburg on 17 August 1786 in theHoly Roman Empire of the German Nation and was namedMarie Louise Victoire.[2] She was the fourth daughter and seventh child ofFranz Frederick Anton, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, by his second wife,Countess Augusta Reuss of Ebersdorf.One of her brothers wasErnest I, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and another brother,Leopold, future king of the Belgians, married, in 1816,Princess Charlotte of Wales, the only legitimate daughter of the future KingGeorge IV, and heiress presumptive to the British throne.[3]
On 21 December 1803 atCoburg, Victoria married (as his second wife)Emich Karl, Prince of Leiningen, whose first wife, Countess Henrietta Sophie ofReuss-Ebersdorf (1767–1801), was Victoria's mother's younger sister. The couple had two children,Prince Karl, born on 12 September 1804, andPrincess Feodora of Leiningen, born on 7 December 1807.
After the death of her first spouse (on 4 July 1814), Victoria served asregent of thePrincipality of Leiningen during the minority of their son, Karl, until her second marriage in 1818.[1]
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The death ofPrincess Charlotte of Wales, the wife of Victoria's brother Leopold, in 1817, prompteda succession crisis in Great Britain. With Parliament offering them a financial incentive, three of Charlotte's uncles, sons of KingGeorge III, were prepared to marry. One of them,Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, proposed to Victoria and she accepted.[4] The couple were married on 29 May 1818 atSchloss Ehrenburg,Coburg,[5] and on 11 July 1818 atKew, a joint ceremony at which Edward's brother, the Duke of Clarence and St Andrews, laterKing William IV, marriedAdelaide of Saxe-Meiningen. Shortly after their marriage, the Kents moved to Germany, where the cost of living was cheaper. Soon after, Victoria became pregnant, and the Duke and Duchess, determined to have their child born in England, raced back.[6][7] An efficient organiser, SirJohn Conroy, ensured the Kents' speedy return to England in time for the birth of their first child.[8] Arriving at Dover on 23 April 1819, they moved intoKensington Palace, where Victoria gave birth to a daughter on 24 May 1819, Princess Alexandrina Victoria of Kent, laterQueen Victoria.[4]
The Duke of Kent died suddenly ofpneumonia in January 1820, six days before his father, King George III.[4] His widow Victoria had little cause to remain in the United Kingdom, since she did not speak the language and had a palace at home in Coburg where she could live cheaply on the revenues of her first husband. However, the British succession at this time was far from assured – of the three brothers older than Edward, the new king, George IV, and theDuke of York were both estranged from their wives, who were in any case past childbearing age. The third brother, the Duke of Clarence, had yet to have any surviving children with his wife. The Duchess of Kent decided that she would do better by gambling on her daughter's accession than by living quietly in Coburg and, having inherited her second husband's debts, sought support from the British government. After the death of Edward and his father, the young Princess Victoria was still only third in line for the throne, andParliament was not inclined to support yet more impoverished royalty.
The provision made for the Duchess of Kent was mean: she resided in a suite of rooms in the dilapidatedKensington Palace, along with several other impoverished members of the royal family, and received little financial support from theCivil List, since Parliament had vivid memories of the late Duke's extravagance. In practice, a main source of support for her was her brother,Leopold. The latter had a huge income of 50,000 pounds per annum for life, representing an annuity allotted to him by the British Parliament on his marriage to Princess Charlotte, which had made him seem likely to become in due course the consort of the monarch.[9] Even after Charlotte's death, Leopold's annuity was not revoked by Parliament.
In 1831, with George IV dead and the new king, William IV (formerly the Duke of Clarence), being over 60 without any surviving legitimate issue, and whose nearly 40-year-old wife was considered to be at the end of childbearing age, the young princess's status asheir presumptive and the Duchess's prospective place asregent led to major increases in British state income for the Kents. Parliament agreed to an annuity for the Duchess and her daughter in August 1831.[10] A contributing factor was Leopold's designation asKing of the Belgians, upon which he surrendered his British income.
Circa 1836 the Duchess composed The Royal Artillery Slow March, which has remained in regular use since its first performance circa 1843.[11]
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Together in a hostile environment,[8][note 1] John Conroy's relationship with the Duchess was very close, with him serving as hercomptroller and private secretary for the next nineteen years,[13] as well as holding the unofficial roles of public relations officer, counsellor, confidant and political agent.[14] While it is not clear which of the two was more responsible for devising theKensington System,[13] it was created to govern young Victoria's upbringing. The intention was for the Duchess to be appointedregent upon Victoria's (assumed youthful) succession and for Conroy to be created Victoria's private secretary and given a peerage.[8] The Duchess and Conroy continued to be unpopular with the royal family and, in 1829, theDuke of Cumberland spread rumours that they were lovers in an attempt to discredit them.[15] TheDuke of Clarence referred to Conroy as "King John",[8] while theDuchess of Clarence wrote to the Duchess of Kent to advise that she was increasingly isolating herself from the royal family and that she must not grant Conroy too much power.[16][17]
The Duchess of Kent was extremely protective and raised Victoria largely isolated from other children under the so-called "Kensington System". The system prevented the princess from meeting people whom her mother and Conroy deemed undesirable (including most of her father's family), and was designed to render her weak and dependent upon them.[18] The Duchess avoided the court because she was scandalised by the presence of King William's illegitimate children,[19] and perhaps prompted the emergence ofVictorian morality by insisting that her daughter avoid any appearance of sexual impropriety.[20] Victoria shared a bedroom with her mother every night, studied with private tutors to a regular timetable, and spent her play-hours with her dolls and herKing Charles Spaniel,Dash.[21]
Perhaps because of Conroy's influence, the relationship between the Duchess's household and William IV soon soured, with the Duchess regarding the King as an oversexed oaf.[22] As far as she dared, the Duchess denied the King access to his niece. She prevented her daughter from attending William's coronation out of a disagreement of precedence,[note 2] a decision attributed by theDuke of Wellington to Conroy.[24][25] In 1831, the year of William's coronation, Conroy and the Duchess embarked on a series of royal tours with Victoria to expose her to the people and solidify their status as potential regents.[26][27] Their efforts were ultimately successful and, in November 1831, it was declared that the Duchess would be sole regent in the event of Victoria's young queenship.[28][29] The Duchess further offended the King by taking rooms in Kensington Palace that the King had reserved for himself, and she snubbed his illegitimate children, theFitzClarences, before and during his reign.
Both the King andQueen Adelaide were fond of their niece, but their attempts to forge a close relationship with the girl were frustrated by the conflict with the Duchess of Kent. The King, angered at what he took to be disrespect from the Duchess to his wife, took the opportunity at what proved to be his final birthday banquet in August 1836 to settle the score. Speaking to those assembled at the banquet, who included the Duchess and Princess Victoria, William expressed his hope that he would survive until Princess Victoria was 18 so that the Duchess of Kent would never be regent. He said,
I trust to God that my life may be spared for nine months longer ... I should then have the satisfaction of leaving the exercise of the Royal authority to the personal authority of that young lady, heiress presumptive to the Crown, and not in the hands of a person now near me, who is surrounded by evil advisers and is herself incompetent to act with propriety in the situation in which she would be placed.[30]
The breach between the Duchess and the King and Queen was never fully healed, but Victoria always viewed both of them with kindness.[31]
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Conroy had high hopes for his patroness and himself: he envisaged Victoria succeeding to the throne at a young age, thus needing a regency government, which, following theRegency Act 1830, would be headed by the princess's mother (who had already served in that capacity in Germany following the death of her first husband).[32] As the personal secretary of the Duchess, Conroy would be the veritable "power behind the throne". He had not counted on William IV surviving long enough for Victoria tocome of age and be able to succeed to the throne as an adult and consequently, while cultivating her mother, had shown little consideration for Victoria. When the latter succeeded, Conroy risked having no influence over her. He tried to force Victoria to agree to make him her personal secretary once she succeeded, but this plan, too, backfired. Victoria resented her mother's support for Conroy's schemes and being pressured by her to sign a paper declaring Conroy her personal secretary. The result was that when Victoria became queen, she relegated the Duchess to separate accommodations, away from her own.[33]
When the Queen's first child, thePrincess Royal, was born, the Duchess of Kent unexpectedly found herself welcomed back into Victoria's inner circle. It is likely that this came about as a result of the dismissal ofBaroness Lehzen at the behest of Victoria's husband (and the Duchess's nephew),Prince Albert. Firstly, this removed Lehzen's influence, and Lehzen had long despised the Duchess and Conroy, suspecting them of an illicit affair. Secondly, it left the Queen wholly open to Albert's influence, and he likely prevailed upon her to reconcile with her mother. Thirdly, Conroy by now was living in exile on the Continent and so his divisive influence was removed. The Duchess's finances, which had been left in shambles by Conroy, were restored thanks to Victoria and her advisors. By all accounts, the Duchess became a doting grandmother and was closer to her daughter than she ever had been.[34]
HistorianA. N. Wilson suggests that Victoria's father could not have been the Duke of Kent for two reasons:
In practice, Wilson's first reason would have required the Duchess's lover to behaemophiliac – an extremely unlikely survival, given the poor state of medicine at the time,[36] or the Duchess herself to be a carrier of haemophilia, since haemophilia isX-linked, meaning that her mother would have been a carrier, if haemophilia was not otherwise previously expressed in the Duchess's parents.[36] Actual evidence to support this theory has not arisen. Haemophilia occurs spontaneously through mutation in at least 30% of cases,[37] and especially in children of older fathers such as Victoria.[38][39]
[40][41] Haemophilia in the descendants of Victoria was known at the time and among European royalty, including Romanoffs, was known as the 'Coburg disease'.[42]
As for Wilson's second reason, there is evidence to suggest Victoria's daughter,Empress Frederick, suffered from porphyria,[43] and John Röhl's book,Purple Secret, documents evidence ofporphyria in Empress Frederick's daughterCharlotte, and her granddaughter,Feodora.[44] Röhl also claims thatPrince William of Gloucester was diagnosed with porphyria shortly before he died in a flying accident.[44] There is moreover no genetic evidence that the royal family ever had the disease: its diagnosis in George III's case (and others) has been questioned.[45]
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The Duchess died at 9:30 am on 16 March 1861, at the age of 74, with her daughter Victoria at her side. The Queen was much affected by her mother's death. Through reading her mother's papers, Victoria discovered that her mother had loved her deeply;[46] she was heart-broken, and blamed Conroy and Lehzen for "wickedly" estranging her from her mother.[47] She is buried in theDuchess of Kent's Mausoleum atFrogmore, Windsor Home Park, near to the royal residenceWindsor Castle.[48]
Queen Victoria and Albert dedicated a window in theRoyal Chapel of All Saints inWindsor Great Park to her memory.[49]
Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld was portrayed byAlison Leggatt in theATV dramaEdward the Seventh, byPenelope Wilton in the 2001 television serialVictoria and Albert,[50] byMiranda Richardson in the 2009 filmThe Young Victoria,[51] byCatherine Flemming in the 2016ITV seriesVictoria[52] and by Florence Dobson in the 2023 limited seriesQueen Charlotte.[53]
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